Star 1000x Larger Than the Sun Set to Collide With Interstellar Wall and Oh God What is an Interstellar Wall?!

Not only is the famed Betelgeuse star set to burn out the remainder of its astronomical life, but it is also on an immediate crash course with a ginormous interstellar wall. Thanks science, we were just saying earlier how we never wanted to sleep ever again!

Thankfully, scientists say this collision will not happen in our lifetime, as the star’s bow shock (the area between an object’s stellar wind and the interstellar medium) is predicted to hit the wall in approximately 5,000 years – with the star colliding some 12,500 year after that. Phew. Kinda.

This wall was initially thought to have manifested from the debris of a dying star, yet a deeper look into the mass found that it is more likely a collection of dust bound together by an interstellar magnetic field, illuminated by the light of the Betelgeuse star.

Scientists say that Betelgeuse is about 1,000 times larger and 100,000 times brighter than the sun, and is destined to briefly outshine the entire galaxy when it goes out thousands of years from now, in a blaze of supernova greatness. Right now though, the dying red star is in a state of upheaval, as it is suffers from an intergalactic death rattle that is causing it to rapidly fall to pieces.